By Dave Stewart
MaxPreps.com
GREENWICH, Conn. - The Greenwich High School Cardinals have been Connecticut’s marquee football team for as long as many of the players on the team can likely remember. A Class LL school with a multitude of quality athletes and a tradition to match that talent, the Cards are, without a doubt, one of the proudest programs in the state.
This season, however, has provided a new a different set of challenges. The Cardinals opened the season with losses to Darien and Ridgefield during the first five games, and were nearly picked off yet again on Homecoming last Saturday, when the Trumbull Golden Eagles fell just short of an upset, 13-6.
While a 4-2 record has put the Cards in dire straits for a state tournament berth — they were ranked 14th after week six — they are still in the hunt for an FCIAC spot with a 3-1 league record. Thus, the goals remain the same.
“The way we see it, we still have a chance,” senior co-captain Ricky Riscica said after Saturday’s game with Trumbull. “We have to win out all our games and a couple of other things have to go our way, but we’re still in this hunt for the FCIAC and State championships. So the goals have not changed at all, we just have extra work to do. We have to work harder to get to it.”
“This group here has dealt with a lot of adversity this year,” head coach Rich Albonizio said. “We lost two of our captains to injuries before the season, this was the first game we’ve had our quarterback back in two weeks, our center was out for four weeks and our backup center was out.
“They hang in there every game, it’s just we don’t do intelligent things sometimes. We shoot ourselves in the foot, we get a lot of penalties and we had a touchdown called back. This is every single week with the penalties and it’s really frustrating.”
It doesn’t get any easier for Greenwich this week, as they will face the Green Knights from St. Joseph of New Jersey at 7 p.m. Friday in Cardinal Stadium.
The Knights come in with a record of 5-0 and have outscored their opponents 174-6 this year. St. Joe’s boasts numerous weapons, including senior quarterback Gabriel Hernandez (484 passing yards, 7 TDs, 2 Interceptions), senior fullback Kevin Adams (42 carries, 274 yards, six TDs) and junior tailback Kamal Hogan (38 carries, 353 yards, 3 TDs).
There’s also senior Ryan Donahue (6-1, 220), the team’s leading tackler with 54; senior Ryan Beauharnais (6-2, 225), who has 38 tackles and two sacks, and senior David Wood, who leads the Knights with four interceptions.
On paper, the game looks like a mismatch for the struggling Cards, but Greenwich will have the home field advantage, unlike last year when they traveled to Naples, Fla.
“I know the fans here and the atmosphere here on Friday night are going to be unbelievable,” Riscica said. “We just have to come out hard at practice all week and do what we have to do to prepare for this team. We can’t be timid. We have to come out knowing that we’re just as good as them.”
Saturday’s game with Trumbull left both teams feeling a bit down, and there weren’t many smiling, happy faces on either of the two sidelines.
On the one side, there was a Greenwich which struggled to put the Eagles away before finally securing the Homecoming win. Penalties and a few missed opportunities hindered the Cardinals throughout the game a trend which, combined with significant injuries, has made the season a struggle thus far.
“It’s a bittersweet victory,” Ricky Riscica said. “Winning on Homecoming is always awesome, but our heads are a little bit down because we didn’t play as well as we could have. That’s why our emotions are a little mixed right now. Overall, it’s a victory and we’ll take it as a victory.”
On the other side was Trumbull, which was stopped inches short of a first down at the Cardinals’ 4-yard line in the final minute and suffered its second consecutive heartbreaking loss. The Eagles, now 2-3 overall and 2-2 in the FCIAC, could easily be 4-1, making the last two losses especially hard to take.
“We had to win this game to stay in the hunt for the playoffs, but obviously we came up short,” Trumbull Head Coach Bob Maffei said. “But you got to love the way our kids played for four quarters. They played hard and they played with a lot of heart and emotion.
“I told them to keep their heads up high, they have nothing to be ashamed of with the way they played today.”
Greenwich could have run away with the game early, thanks in large part to a strong defensive effort which included three first-half interceptions by 5-7 corner Camryn Ferrara. The Cards scored following two of those picks, as quarterback Mike Lefflbine threw touchdown passes of 15 and 17 yards to Matt Grant in the final 4:32 of the first half.
But the Cards ever put the game away, and when Trumbull QB Mike Pope connected with Phil Terio for a 22-yard score with 3:17 remaining in the game, the Eagles were still in business.
After Trumbull’s score, the Cardinals gathered in an onside kick with about three minutes to play, but couldn’t run out the clock. The Eagles’ defense came up with the stop on fourth-and-2 at the Trumbull 44-yard line, putting Pope and the offense back in business with 1:56 to play.
Pope hit Terio for a 31-yard strike on fourth-and-10 for a first down at the Greenwich 13, but the Eagles got just four yards on the next three plays, bringing up another fourth down. Pope scrambled away from a couple of tacklers before being stopped by Grant and Jake Longo near the first down marker, but the ball was about an inch short, as the Cards finally clinched the win.
“When we have adversity, we don’t just react to it, we respond very well,” Maffei said. “The same thing happened to us last week, when we had the ball down there and we could have won the game. These are tough losses.
“We were ready to play. They didn’t fool us or anything — maybe a couple of plays here or there. But not getting the ball into the end zone on our first drive and then letting some big passes go over our heads cost us. But we made some adjustments at halftime and shut it down.”
Trumbull had a nice opening drive stopped when Ferrara intercepted a pass at the Greenwich 3-yard line.
Greenwich came back with an 18-play drive which ended in Trumbull territory when safety Colin Moore came up with a stuff for a 10-yard loss on fourth down.
Ferrara added two more interceptions in the second quarter, with each leading to a TD. Ferrara returned the second pick 61 yards to the Trumbull 11-yard line.
Greenwich could have gone up by three scores in the third quarter after an interception by linebacker Shane Kelly set the Cards up at the Eagles’ 16-yard line. But the Cardinals fumbled at the goal line and Alex Roque recovered for Trumbull, which quickly cleared out from the red zone.
Dave Stewart, the Sports Editor of the New Canaan (Conn.) Advertiser, is a MaxPreps.com writer and photographer. He may be reached at 203-966-9541 or at sports@ncadvertiser.com